


We Write Love Songs in C

by rivlee



Series: Gone Are All The Days [36]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivlee/pseuds/rivlee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy, Eddie, and music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Write Love Songs in C

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the original ficlets in the Gone Are All the Days 'verse and I JUST realized I never posted it here. Title is from Frank Turner's _Try This At Home_. Originally posted in 2011.

Watching Eddie play his guitar was always a delight. He had a way of working the crowd, all full of bright eyes and sly smiles, promising a fun ride for anyone willing to come along. Eddie knew how to put on a stage persona; he was more the frat boy in college towns and the choir boy through parts of Appalachia, where you respected the music you played while having a good time.

To watch him sing and play when no one else was there, it was like watching a soul commune with God. Andy always felt so privileged to witness the moments when it was just Eddie and his music, awed more than once by the absolute calm that settled over him. 

He’d seen Eddie sing in so many different places. Under his breath while he taught new boots and non-infantry in the blazing sun and humidity of Camp Lejeune mornings. At Camp Pendleton, singing and ordering in the drill, the cadence carrying in perfect rhythm. In Afghanistan, in Kuwait, in Iraq, boosting to the morale and catering to the stress reactions of young men needing to sing something in order to cover the white noise of bombs and arms fire. 

And still it was seeing Eddie like this that meant the most. Worn out blue jeans, fraying t-shirt with a faded logo, bare feet in the warm grass as he sat on the ground and sang to the heavens. It was freedom--pure and simple--of expression, of emotion, no need to play for an audience and their approval. There was no pressure when Eddie performed like this, just peace, happiness, and the beautiful sounds produced by his talented hands. There was a time when Andy thought he’d never get to see this again. And even then, back when they were both in the Corps, Eddie was never like this, scruff on his face and non-regulation hair, acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. Back then even their private life wasn’t their own, they had to watch out for every stranger, any possible chance of providing evidence in violating a policy that was supposedly there to protect them. For all the years they were together _before_ it was never like _this_.

Now Andy got to watch Eddie whenever he wanted for however long he liked. He fell asleep with a smile on his face and Eddie beside him, teasing him over the ban on singing Bob Dylan in public places. These days he got to wake up and Eddie sleep. He got to see him truly rest. He got to see him truly smile.

They still fought, probably more so now that they didn’t have new boots to yell out or state of the art gun ranges to work on. Eddie still rarely spent a whole month at home, more than half a lifetime full of wandering left him with an itch in his veins. Andy spent half the summer and all the fall devoted to the start of a new school year and football season. Still, they somehow managed to work now better than they ever had before. Apparently old age was good for something. Both of them knew this time was gift.

Andy stepped out on his back porch and leaned against the door frame, listening to Eddie pluck away at some half-shaped tune. Half the time Andy didn’t even know what he was singing. Eddie knew traditional songs, brought from his mother’s family out of the hollers of Kentucky and from his father’s kin in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. They were traditional songs using words and turns of phrases which only made sense for those privileged enough to know the history. He usually just sang whatever he was feeling that day.

Today it was the standard folk of the 1960s and 1970s.

“You planning on leading a protest down at the Piggly Wiggly because they stopped stocking your favorite brand of coffee?” Andy asked as he sat down beside him.

Eddie just turned his head and smirked. He stopped in the middle of his song and started strumming out the opening chords of Bob Dylan’s _I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight_.

“Jackass,” Andy said.

Eddie just leaned his head against Andy’s shoulder and sung the rest of the song.


End file.
